Exploring the St. Francis Dam Ruins

hi I'm Bethany and that's true today we are in the hills of Santa Clarita it's an area covered with beautiful mountains rocks and the remains of a historic event an event which occurred almost 90 years ago and is now known as one of the greatest tragedies in California history join us as we search for the ruins of the st. Francis stand coming up on oddity oddity I'm guessing hey daddy how many times you could say damn oh you are guessing correctly you know for a structure that was once 200 feet tall I'm not really seeing any resemblance of former spectra can't find structure so where do we start we'll start in Santa Clarita by taking the five freeway to the McBean Parkway exit following that northeast about six miles will bring us to a dead end at Copper Hill Drive we'll turn right and then left onto San Francisquito Canyon Road after that we're not entirely sure where exactly the ruins are located hopefully we'll know when we see them that could be what's it supposed to look like nuts I don't see any concrete do you there's at the end of the episode turns out the ruins of the State Fair system are not as easy to spot as one would think so we decided to regroup and research at the Los Angeles Central Library after sifting through numerous map newspaper clippings and books she came across the name of Alan Pollack president of the Santa Clarita Historical Society we contacted him and he offered to give us a tour of the site with fellow expert and executive director of the community hiking club Dianne Erskine hollyball the way we chose Austin yeah Dam Canyon we're going up to exam 3 so we have two special guests or damaged that are going to give us a pore you're actually following them right now to the location we lost them we have to find it also there but if you don't have people to follow wait a little bit part of mine right but we weren't too far off the first time around follow San Francisquito Canyon Road about seven and a half miles until you see a gravel road on the right blocked off by several concrete barriers this is what remains of old San Francisquito Canyon Road and if you park here you can follow the old road directly to the dam site today we have two very special guests Alan and Diane they are our st. Francis dam renowned historian the story of the st. Francis dam to me is really the story of Los Angeles itself it's the story of the water history that allowed Los Angeles to grow from a little town of a hundred thousand people to the major megalopolis that we have today are there ten million people and the reason for that is William Mulholland who is really the greatest historic figure in Los Angeles history but whose story is is that of a rise and fall Shakespearean tragedy a lot of people in the world know Mulholland Drive or whatever but they don't really know the story behind this man and that's that's really what what has brought us here today perfect okay so we're going to go into that a little bit more later and Diane said there's something yeah there are dancing in the right corner let's take a peek at this all right I'm going to check it out cool so we're going to go up to some sort of overlook think that I'm getting assistance so what is this Vista where have you brought us now we have brought you to the lower part of the floodplain just below where the dam is and as you can see right there you see a big pyramid shaped rock I do is that part of the dam that is the largest part that came down in one piece it's about 15 tons and it's called the pyramid well but you can see that that flat area up there the dam was behind that Oh God this piece had to come down where the road is down there and then swirl around over here so if you can imagine the power of the water yeah the amount of water that it was between 140 and 180 feet that came out of the dam so it was an amazing amazing from the overlook Alan and Diane led us down the old abandoned San Francisquito Canyon Road to what remains of the dams original foundation so we've kind of arrived at the location of the dam correct yes and I'm seeing I think I've seen part of it up there with a different colored rock right there so what are we long the right hand side what you're seeing is the cement that's left over from the western wing dikes to the left of that is red subsea conglomerate and that's laid down with layers of sand and rock and sand and rock and while it could look fairly stable if you expose it to water it crumbles it just falls apart and that's why this side of the dam failed itself so yeah where was the where was the initial failure like was it the west side or further yeah it was on the eastern side and he'll tell you about that there's been a lot of a lot of controversy over that over the years but but the the consensus is that it started on the eastern which is across from us here yes so let's walk over there and we'll show you the other side the st. Francis dam began with hope when William Mulholland was assigned a job to oversee the project which is provide citizens with years of reassurance that water would not be scarce so what was it that caused such a bold and magnificent and appearance structure to fail we heard several reasons as to what could have gone wrong all right if you had a hike a little bit but we made it and referring yourself we kind of made it recuperated we lost I an somewhere so I'm looking tell me about where we're standing right now all right so where we've climbed up the hill to an overlook if you look across the canyon here you see the remains of what's called an ancient Paleolithic landslide it's made up of polonius rock and when William Mulholland built this dam which started in 1924 he was first going to build the dam in big Tujunga Canyon but the landowners there got wind of the dam being built and they jacked up their land prices to sell them so he decided to build it here one of the big mistakes with building this dam was they they decided in order to get more water capacity in this reservoir they raised the dam first by a 10 feet and then by another 10 feet without widening the base of the dam which was a big mistake because that destabilized how the water pressure was pushing against the dam and this wing dike is here because of that extra 20 feet that they raised in order to have that extra water capacity I'm March 12th 1928 one week after the dam was completely filled up this Eastern abutment of the dam gave way and that started the whole chain of events that caused the dam break it was three minutes to midnight when the dam burst it took all me 40 minutes for the 12.4 a billion gallons of water to rush how in a tenth of highways and crush destroy and claim everything in its path [Music] westernland Ike was in perfect condition when the dam fail you can still walk along it and come right to the edge and to try to get rid of interest in the dam at the time they just jack-hammered it all out so when you're driving by I almost can't tell now you can't tell it just looks like rocks of Herakles there's still remnants of the pipes that used to be the walkway or the the barrier on the walkway and you can identify that what was the top by the flat pieces like you can see that flat piece over there and flat right there and that was your people [Music] so we are here at the foundation of what used to be the st. Francis dam and I hear there was something called a tombstone what is that or what was it I guess I should well because of the way the dam was built the only part that was built fairly correct was the very middle part and that was the only part that you see there which actually survived the collapse of the dam which they eventually called the tombstone but it looks like a tooth look look that's the name comes from and that actually after the dam break became rather a big tourist attraction I noticed that it's not here anymore so what happened to it about a year later after the dam break there were two little boys playing on it as you can see from this photo their steps going up and so these steps yes okay that's right there perfect and so one of the little kids was up at the top of the Tim stone up here and the other kid on his way up saw a snake he picked the snake up and he threatened the kid and waved it in the air and then he threw it at the kid and the other kid got scared backed up and fell off the dam and was killed and so then the Bureau of waterworks and supply blew it up and that was their excuse to get rid of this and that was one of the only remaining pieces exact lies exactly but there are so many other stories so here we are standing in front of this village that the Bureau of waterworks of Los Angeles initially made for the people that worked on the aqueduct and the power house this village was right in the path of the st. Francis dam when it broke so when it broke it just annihilated almost everybody that we little Johnny tracks Boyd was a six-year-old boy he absolutely was in love with the idea of being a cowboy so his parents body was cowboy hat chef and a little popgun and he'd go around pop gunning everybody he brought us and as a six-year-old child he had absolutely no chance when the watershed he drowned and was carried downstream they did find him and they found his cowboy hat and he was buried with his cowboy hat the Curtis children lived here with their parents of Lyman and Lillian and Lyman had seen the dam the night before and he's seen the large leaks that he was really concerned so here's money water coming through an area there was muddy water and that's a bad sign down Norman and Mulholland came to look at the dam because Tony Harnish figure who is the dam keeper had seen this muddy water and he was really concerned and so he came to look at it and since the San Francisquito Road had just been put in he said now don't worry it's just you know mud from the road nothing to be concerned about when you see muddy water coming out from under the foundation it might be a sign of erosion of the foundation as opposed to clear water that they wouldn't worry about all right yeah and he misread it and had he realized what it was he could have warned people and saved all those lives so Allen Dan you shared a lot of story today a lot of history about what happened in this place and there it is a quite a big number people diabetic well over 400 it's I think somewhere between 425 and 431 some of which are still unknown and some of them are unnamed yeah that's a lot of people have lost a lot of people well two very important names today we learned were Alan and Diane thank you for joining us thank you thank you thank you on March 12th 1928 over 400 lives were lost some blame the land some blame the man with the tragedy weighing so heavily on his own shoulders William Holland lived the rest of his life in solution he once dated don't blame anyone else you just fasten it on me if there was any error in human judgment I was the human on an occasion like this I envy the dead as it turns out sometimes getting lost can lead to better directions than you expected that's very true we want to send a special thank you to Alan and Diane for coming out here with us today and sharing their passion and knowledge they are currently working on a way to help us all remember those who lost their life with the st. Francis dam disaster national memorial Act so if you get a second visit SCV history.com and find out if there's a way that you can help make this memorial happen also if you want to see some extended interviews from today's adventure visit Odyssey odyssey's dot-com thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time on Odyssey Odyssey just fine as it was intended windy up here all week just today for us you say of course or did you say curse are just either way you're correct

Channel: Oddity Odysseys

Views: 73,436

Rating: 4.9339681 out of 5

Keywords: St. Francis Dam, dam break, urban exploration, angeles national forest, california, santa clarita, william mulholand, western wing dike, dam disaster, disaster, tombstone, beautiful girl, oddities, unusual, explore, tourist locations, hiking, 1928, adam the woo, tom explores, san francisquito canyon, santa clarita historical society, alan pollack, dianne erskine-hellrigel, hidden, secret, drone shot, atlas obscura, LADWP, 90th anniversary, memorial, tragedy, santa clarita diet

Id: BwXKmDgvtpY

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2017